The invention relates generally to the field of streaming media, and more particularly to the streaming of live media in a scalable and flexible manner.
Available bandwidth in the internet can vary widely. For mobile networks, the limited bandwidth and limited coverage, as well as wireless interference can cause large fluctuations in available bandwidth which exacerbate the naturally bursty nature of the internet. When congestion occurs, bandwidth can degrade quickly. For streaming media, which require long lived connections, being able to adapt to the changing bandwidth can be advantageous. This is especially so for streaming which requires large amounts of consistent bandwidth.
In general, interruptions in network availability where the usable bandwidth falls below a certain level for any extended period of time can result in very noticeable display artifacts or playback stoppages. Adapting to network conditions is especially important in these cases. The issue with video is that video is typically compressed using predictive differential encoding, where interdependencies between frames complicate bit rate changes. Video file formats also typically contain header information which describe frame encodings and indices; dynamically changing bit rates may cause conflicts with the existing header information. This is further complicated in live streams where the complete video is not available to generate headers from.
Frame-based solutions like RTSP/RTP solve the header problem by only sending one frame at a time. In this case, there is no need for header information to describe the surrounding frames. However RTSP/RTP solutions can result in poorer quality due to UDP frame loss and require network support for UDP firewall fixups, which may be viewed as network security risks. More recently segment-based solutions like HTTP Live Streaming allow for the use of the ubiquitous HTTP protocol which does not have the frame loss or firewall issues of RTSP/RTP, but does require that the client media player support the specified m3u8 playlist polling. For many legacy mobile devices that support RTSP, and not m3u8 playlists, a different solution is required.